


Lightning Between the Trees

by nightships



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Park Rangers AU, Sharing a Bed, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 03:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8085862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightships/pseuds/nightships
Summary: Emma and Killian are park rangers working as part of a unit in a northern national forest. When a heavy storm strikes, they're cabin bound for the night.





	

“If I have to stomp out one more campfire before lunch I’m going to lay a bear trap at the trailhead.”

Emma’s radio nearly slides out of her hand as she pounds her boot into still-warm ash, grumbling to herself as the coals flash orange and fizzle out again. She feels like she can _hear_ Killian grinning as he reminds her that fire danger is only moderate today — it’s perfect timing that he’s in a good mood now that hers has turned.

“Bear traps are for bears, Swan. Not for campers.”

“I won’t tell David if you don’t.”

Broken twigs snap under her feet as she makes sure there aren’t any lingering pieces ready to come back to life when she walks away. Whoever lit the fire ripped small branches off the surrounding trees in an effort to build it higher, and Emma finds herself darkly hoping that the resulting smoke made them leave so early.

He continues to try and lighten her mood throughout the day, sharing his optimistic version of next week’s weather report, and Emma’s occupied enough that she doesn’t notice the new lightness in his voice. She listens to him go on about barometric pressure and rainfall patterns as she clears fallen limbs off a half-mile of trail, forgetting to tease him about his hobby as she backtracks to find the hat that silently fell off her head in the middle of the path. It’s not like hers is any better — she regularly decorates the wooden raccoon statue they found a few weeks ago with outfits from the lost and found bin — but it definitely takes up less radio time.

“Emma, are you listening?”

She shoves the hat back on her head and pulls the walkie-talkie off of her belt, unsure of what she’d missed. “I copy,” she answers back, hoping he didn’t try to quiz her on whatever he’d been talking about.

“I asked if you thought you’d be back in time.”

“In time for what?”

“In time to beat the rain,”  he tells her, with the obvious air of someone who already told her this before. “NWS just put out a bulletin for a storm that’s going to cover the park.” Emma notices the quiet in the trees around her, then, the lack of birds tweeting and squirrels shuffling from tree to tree. The wildlife is already taking cover, but she’s been too busy making noisy piles of sticks and leaves to notice. 

Well, _shit_.

"Emma, did you copy my last?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she snaps, looking skyward. It’s not that dark overhead, but she’s willing to bet that if she could see through the tree line she’d see the storm hurtling toward her. Sure enough, the thought barely crosses her mind when a distant rumble of thunder makes itself known. “I’m still half a mile away.”

“Do you want me to come and get you?” 

It should have made her angry — scratch that, it _would_ have made her angry if he didn’t believe she could make it back on her own when it wasn’t even raining yet — but there was no smile in his voice. He sounded serious, worried even, and her thoughts flash to that night on the porch, how softly he’d spoken with her when the sun went down. Sitting with him and letting his fingers dance closer as the sky went purple had been a curious sort of magic, one she hadn’t quite had time to think about since. Work in the park is busy, especially when she makes it that way. Truth be told, she’s afraid of what he’ll say in the next ten minutes they’ll have alone together.

“I’m fine. It hasn’t started raining here yet.” Her finger lifts off the talk button just as another roll of thunder makes its way overhead, and her footsteps pick up considerably. It’s not quite a jog, not for the first few feet, but it becomes one when he answers back and she can hear the pouring rain better than his voice through the crackling radio.

“Call if you change your mind,” he says uneasily, leaving it at that. 

* * *

 

She’s drenched to the bone by the time the cabin comes into view. The bottom of her boots are caked with leaves and mud, as well as her left side. She’d fallen over an exposed root she normally took care to miss because _normally_ she could see more than ten feet in front of her. _Normally_  she wasn’t tearing down the trail at full speed. _Normally_ she didn’t get leaves stuck in her hair as she tried not to run into tree trunks. None of this was normal. The pain, along with her bruised ego, is enough to take her from annoyed to genuinely upset for the remainder of her trip. Emma fights to keep the cabin door from flying open in the wind when she finally slows down to open it, accidentally slamming the thing in her eagerness to ease the stitch in her side.

Footsteps rush quickly up the stairs from the basement, and then Killian’s worried eyes aren’t just in her head, they’re right in front of her. He’s moving close with a concern that’s just as jarring as the change in ambient noise around them, unable to speak as he takes in the state of her. “That took a while.”

Again, the concern is evident, but the adrenaline from her flight out of the storm makes her want to snap back at him. She’s too winded to say much, but she manages to throw him a look about as warm as she feels while she pulls her boots off, shoving them into the corner where their raccoon friend sits. Her jacket goes next, followed by her uniform shirt, until all that’s left is a camisole. She wants to do the same with her pants — she wants to turn on the oven and climb inside for an hour or two, if she’s being honest — but his eyes haven’t left her since he came up the stairs.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

His question forces her to look down at herself, at the goosebumps trailing across her arms and her neck. Her fingernails are covered in dirt, but the skin is white and raised beneath it. 

"I’ll be okay when I warm up.”

He knows her well enough not to argue, to back off while she digs around in storage trying to find something that’ll fit around her waist. More specifically, she’s trying to find something other than the spare pair that are obviously Killian’s, folded in the neat way he always leaves his dishtowels. When it’s clear she has no other choice, she drags the pants and the chair they’re sitting on over to the utility sink, shoves the faucet handle as far to the left as it’ll go and swipes the mud off of her neck, shutting her eyes at the feeling of the warm water.

And then the lights start to flicker. Emma looks at the bare bulb over her head — scowls at it, really — and shucks off her wet trousers. Killian’s are way too roomy, but they’re warm, and it’s enough, even though the power goes off for good when she’s on the fourth step up.

Killian’s busy on a radio call with David, his back turned to her while she walks up the stairs, so she takes the opportunity to sit down, folding one leg under her when her shoulders hit the back of the couch. The tank she’s wearing isn’t doing much for her arms but she’s giving herself a minute before getting up again. The sound of rain falling on the roof sounds nicer every minute she’s not standing in it, and if she pretends she can’t hear concern in the tone of Killian’s voice, it’s almost nice.

“David says the power’s knocked out. They think a line went down closer to the quarry, but he won’t let anyone check until the rain lets up.”

“Good call.”

“He also said generators are emergency-only for tonight. He says he wants to keep them down unless we hear of any fire activity.”

“ _Bad_ call,” Emma groans, dropping her head onto the back of the couch. “Does he know we still have 12 gallons of gas?”

“He knows,” he sighs, wiping a hand across his chin. Killian falls into the seat next to her, never quite letting his shoulders touch the backrest as he stares out the window at the downpour. It occurs to her how _dry_  he looks, but she doesn’t take the invitation to speak just yet.

They both started the exact same day, both assigned to this corner of the massive forest, but sometimes it feels like he’s been here for decades. She sees it when he looks out at the nature around them, when they’re in one of the meadows and the sky feels endless above their heads. She sees it now when the rain reflects grey over top the usual blue in his eyes, adding several years to a normally youthful expression.

Contemplating him makes Emma forget how annoyed she is that the power’s out, that her hair is damp, that she tripped and fell in the mud in the middle of a thunderstorm. She stops worrying about lightning striking in the dry part of the forest, about more downed power lines and generators they aren’t allowed to use, about where the blue fluffy towel that should have been on top of the dryer went to, and turns her attention on him instead.

“How long you think it’ll take Leroy to go stir-crazy all alone up on the hilltop?”

* * *

 

Night falls dark and fast save for for the lightning frequently splitting the sky, and Emma’s frustration evaporates with the rain on her skin. She gets Killian to help her shove the couch closer to the windows with a promise to rush downstairs at the first sign of actual trouble, but the soreness in her side has her reluctant to move at all when they’re done. He seems to notice her wincing at the effort of shoving furniture around, because she feels his gaze lingering on her instead of the lightning outside.

But then she feels his fingers rather than his eyes skimming the side of her ribs, and the lightning’s streaking beneath her skin. “Is this from today?” Killian isn’t even that close to her, but the cabin feels half its size when she his thumb skims over something painful.

She looks down and yes, there’s a bruise blooming at the line where her camisole stops under her arm. “Knob of a root got me,” she mutters, pushing her arm back to pull the shirt down at the seam. She grimaces; the bruise dips well past the skin she’s showing now. “Not as bad now as it was when I was jogging back here.”

“A bit cold, are we, Swan?” The goosebumps are back, along with the smile in his voice. Emma’s not sure which comes first. “When you went down to the basement, I thought you’d come up wearing more than pants… _my_ pants,” he points out, his dimple puckering his cheek.

Emma swats his hand away and moves to find something she can wrap around her shoulders, but there’s nothing to grab. His eyes never really leave her as she glances around in vain for something substantial and warm. It’s the push-pull that they have — she bothers him, he teases her, taking turns like they wrote out a schedule beforehand — and it’s nothing she’s not used to.

The thing about it, she realizes once she’s in the basement rooting through the laundry again, is that they work well together — the operative word being _work._ She’s always had something else to look at, something to do with her hands. They aren’t usually stuck in a cabin together with no way to drive home and nothing but hours of free time and a few feet of cabin between them. She can pull this old camp shirt over her head without worrying about who wore it last, but the same isn’t true about his pants no matter what she tells herself. Blue towel in hand, Emma pretends that the pain in her side isn’t throbbing with every step up the stairs. 

Killian’s pulled a folding table out of the closet and set up a deck of cards while she was gone. Half of them are organized in front of him in a game of Solitaire, the other gathered in a neat pile in his hand. He scoots over when she approaches, giving her room, and she greets him by moving a six of clubs onto a seven. “I counted a dozen or so bolts while you were gone,” he tells her as she studies the less obvious moves available. “We’re going to be busy tomorrow morning.”

“You think it’ll stop by then?” She answers, drawing a card from the pile in his hand like it was in her own. 

He shrugs lightly. “I think David’s apt to have us working out in the rain if things get bad enough.”

“Maybe you think too much.”

Staying awake becomes its own little game, especially with candles lit on the tables and countertops of the cabin, and even though Emma can’t remember what she did in particular to make herself so tired she feels herself fighting it harder than he is. Solitaire turns into Gold Fish turns into Guess Which Card You Have On Your Forehead and then they forget the cards altogether, turning back to the lightning as it continues to shatter the night.

It’s with her shoulder skimming his that she hears of the chapter of his life spent watching storms break over the harbor where he worked, of all the damaged ships he repaired in late summer. It surprises her, since she’s only ever seen him in the middle of the woods, but suddenly it fits into place.

Emma tells him about growing up on several different coasts, lingering on the ones she picked for herself after she left her last foster family. She goes right to one of her favorite memories of the ocean, sharing a tiny piece of herself that nobody else has heard without realizing what she’s doing.

It’s easier than she thinks, being stuck in a cabin with someone, but maybe it’s just because the someone is Killian.

* * *

 

Emma wakes up in the middle of the night to lights glowing low around them, a jarring rumble of thunder pulling her back to consciousness. She spends a moment blinking and trying to grasp something in the dim light before she understands why she can see in the first place — they’d left the candles burning and fallen asleep. Emma isn’t sure if it’s been minutes or hours until she feels Killian asleep next to her. Her fluffy towel is spread over her shoulders like it was before, but his arm is laying overtop of it, fingers grazing her skin right where the makeshift blanket ends. The weight is obvious now that she’s paying attention, and sleepily, she wonders how its always moments like this that they dance closest to each other. It feels like she’s the sun and he’s the moon, close but never quite sharing the same sky.

Emma lets his arm fall to blow out the candles they’d left burning, finding half had already snuffed themselves out. She takes time checking each one and checking the door after that, and it’s not stalling, she just…she wants to give him time to wake up, to sever whatever tie is tugging her back in his direction. If she’s not supposed to fall back into his side once the cabin’s completely dark, she wants to know it before she embarrasses herself by letting hope take root.

"Emma?” His groggy, thick voice calls out to her just as she’s working her way back to him, hands out at her sides to avoid any stumbling. Biting back the curse of regret on her lips, she walks slower, wondering if he can see her any better than she can see him.

“We left candles burning. I blew them out,” she tells him. Does her voice sound different because she just woke up, or because of what’s been on her mind since? “David would kill us if he found out.”

“I won’t tell David if you don’t.”

She hears him shift against the couch and stops entirely, leaving room for him to walk past her when he gets up, but nothing passes her by. Four or five heartbeats go by, and she’s opening her mouth to speak again when he cuts her off, his voice surprisingly steady.

“Are you coming back?”

“I...thought you might want to sleep,” she says, confused and hopeful all at once. 

“Aye, don’t you?” 

“Yeah?”

“Well then, come on.”

Her heart’s picked up considerably, but she manages to move forward without stumbling over the card table. His hand is waiting for her, helping guide her to him before she rams her knee into his stomach. Soon she’s close enough to tell he’s laid down along the length of the couch, shoved himself into the back of it to give her room beside him. He reaches out to the same bruise on her ribcage as she lowers herself down, trying to make room on what suddenly seems to be the smallest couch she’s ever tried to lay on.

“I never realized how short this thing was,” she comments quietly, shivering when his arm draws around her middle and his hand falls on the cushion behind her back. 

“I’ve slept worse,” he whispers. Emma wonders if the smile has always been so obvious in his voice or if she’s just learned to hear it in these months spent in the forest with him. His knee skims the back hers, and she thinks of the night on the porch again, her hand bumping his as often as her bravery would allow. Maybe this is his way of reaching back, just later than expected. “Nice pants, by the way.”

She laughs and shuts her eyes, and it feels lighter than the room around them, warmer than the air that the rain had brought with it. Emma remembers eclipses, then, and how the sun and moon really can meet when the timing’s right. It’s as good a sign as any to lean forward, she thinks, and let the darkness pull them close like it always does.

He doesn’t make her wait nearly as long for the kiss that comes after she moves, and this time, when she falls asleep with his arm around her, it’s on purpose.


End file.
